A Riverside employee maneuvers a street sweeper around a parked car on Montgomery Street in 2006. Council members recently opted not to make changes to the street sweeping program but said parking enforcement will be more responsive to complaints.

Riverside officials aren’t making changes to their street-sweeping policies, after one councilman said he’s satisfied that parking enforcement officials will be more accommodating to residents.

Council members reviewed the sweeping program after getting complaints about ticketing practices, such as citing drivers who re-parked on the street after the sweeper passed. After discussing the program at a Jan. 28 meeting, council members didn’t propose any changes.

Councilman Mike Soubirous, who raised questions after hearing concerns while campaigning, said he recently talked with the city manager and public works director and expects them to be more responsive to residents.

“I think they’re going to kind of scale back on some of the harshness” in parking enforcement, he said. “I think it’s just tweaking what we’ve been doing and getting our people to be a little less heavy-handed.”

Riverside has been sweeping streets for years to comply with clean water laws, and it began phasing in parking enforcement in 2006 to get more drivers to move their cars. The city issues an average of about 3,100 sweeping citations a month.

Between ticket revenue and a street sweeping charge in business and residential trash bills, the program either broke even or made money the last two fiscal years, according to city information.

In response to public concerns, parking officials no longer give tickets if the sweeper comes back for a second pass, Public Works Director Tom Boyd said.

As to other complaints, he said, officials take them on a case-by-case basis, but “we do stress a common-sense approach. … It’s not about just issuing tickets; it’s about keeping the road clear so we can sweep the street.”

Alicia Robinson covers Anaheim for The Orange County Register. She previously spent 10 years at The Press-Enterprise writing about Riverside and local government as well as Norco, Corona, homeless issues, Alzheimer's disease, streetcars, butterflies, horses and chickens. She grew up in the Midwest but earned Southern California native status during many hours spent in traffic. Two big questions Alicia tries to answer in stories about government are: how is it supposed to work, and how is it working?

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